Buggy Games. It's Time They Are Held Accountable.

Last month, I wrote a heated case against Telltale's The Walking Dead. Agree or disagree there was one thing that I felt needed its own time. It needed to get separated from the attachment some players had towards one particular game. This of course has to deal with game bugs. Let me be clear when I say that I completely understand that every game is going to have bugs. I get that, and it's fair that they come up but it's been a few years now and it confuses me immensely that gamers seem more and more to turn a blind eye to bugs altogether. To add more to this, many editors on gaming sites are perfectly fine to overlook the bugs to a high enough degree that they give games with game breaking bugs, near perfect scores. I'm calling this trend out. This has to stop.

"The Game Wasn't Buggy For Me"

I'll admit, that I too, had an attitude that if I didn't experience the bugs that others suffer through, that it wasn't relevant in a discussion about how great a game was. I mean, why should I let someone else's problems bother me? I'm not saying they should, but all of us need to understand that being on the wrong end of a game ending bug sucks. Imagine you get a game that everyone loves only to not have the game work properly or even break your gaming machine? I feel like you wouldn't tell all the "whiners" to shut up and buy a better computer or take care of their electronics better. And so following Telltale's The Walking Dead game, my eyes opened. I played a game that everyone loved, yet I couldn't see why, and it mostly came from the game failing to promise a quality experience. I thought it would be. The gaming media reviewed it favorably, everyone who played it loved it, yet I felt that the gaming populace lied to me. That all of these players/review editors played it off as "small bugs," "nothing unbearable," and to make the lie more convincing gave the game such high scores that it had to be believed. This is wrong. We as consumers in a free market have control over what gets rewarded and what doesn't and right now a disturbing trend is continuing to thrive and grow that lets developers get away with selling broken products.

Together We Can Change Things

I think we collectively as consumers and as lovers of this media that we begin to use our power to make it that no one has to suffer through game breaking bugs. It's one thing to see a small bug that does nothing more than make you laugh, but game breaking bugs need to be addressed. We can't keep giving games that have these problems a free pass. Fans need to stop blindly supporting and admit that there are problems, to let fellow gamers understand that the game may have issues that we as players should take caution too. Reviewers as well, need to call attention that a buggy game is never a near perfect game. It can be a good game, but never a great, and scores should reflect that. Ambition doesn't cover poor quality assurance. If you have played a decent amount of games in the past ten years you should have at least experienced some, if not many, glitches in games, and what scares me is they continue to get worse. Everyone continues to say that big games deserve a break, but that's nonsense. No matter the scope, no matter the excellence throughout, no game deserves a free pass on this. We need to voice these issues and make game developers take this matter more seriously.

Offenders Everywhere

Telltale's The Walking Dead has been the biggest offender that I have personally experienced, but this isn't the only game, there are so many other games that give rise to huge problems. Huge. And it appears that gamers are okay with it if it's part of the "in" crowd for the hardcore gamer. I can't believe how many people herald TWD as Game of the Year when many players can't even experience it properly, if at all. Skyrim, Fallout, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Dead Island, Assassin's Creed III, Darksiders 2, Gears of War. These are just the first games I could think of when I think about game crashing/ending bugs. And it's true that some games get what they deserve both from fans and reviews, but this can't be a double standard. You can't say you hate Assassin's Creed III for the bugs and then jump into Skyrim and completely ignore them. It's nuts. Discussions and creating a more intelligent debate when it comes to our games has to grow, we can't keep accepting things if they give us some of what we like. It's the sign of a sad addiction when someone is okay with broken quality as long as they still get that high feeling they are looking for.

Looking Ahead

The future of games will only hold as much promise as we give the industry now, the message currently seems to be that in this day and age, we are willing to pay to be beta testers on products, that we are willing to buy games that might not work, that we will herald defective software as the best the industry produced for the year. This can't continue because if these are the standards we continue to stand by we are in for a very messy future of games that continue to lower the bar of acceptance to a point where I can't imagine a large mass of people would want to put in the trouble to play games. So please discuss, share, and take notice! We the consumer are responsible for what happens.

Small Note: I just want it to be known that I'm not saying that most of the big games with bugs are horrible and should never get played. I'm just saying that when giving praise we need to hold ourselves in check and actually discuss the realities of the game. For instance, I love Assassin's Creed III, having a blast with it still, but I'm not going to ignore that there are bugs, and they can get annoying. If I was someone asked to recommend the game or review, I'd make people know very clearly that I love the experience but the bugs are a problem that may ruin the experience for some.